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Saturday, October 12, 2013

The Nutrition Debate #151: Homage to Vilhjalmur Stefansson by his wife Evelyn

This entire column, with thanks
to my editor, is an excerpt from the Canadian blog Empirica, by L.
Amber Wilcox O’Hearn.

“I
recently came across an edition of Richard Mackarness's book Eat
Fat and Grow Slim. It includes a preface written by Stefansson's wife, Evelyn…. I
reproduce it here because it is an interesting perspective from a wife and
home-maker.

PREFACE

One morning at breakfast, the
autumn of 1955, my explorer-anthropologist husband, Vilhjalmur Stefansson,
asked me if he might return to the Stone Age Eskimo sort of all-meat diet he
had thrived on during the most active part of his arctic work. Two years
before, he had suffered a mild cerebral thrombosis, from which he had
practically recovered. But he had not yet succeeded in losing the ten pounds of
overweight his doctor wanted him to be rid of. By will power and near
starvation, he had now and then lost a few of them; but the pounds always came
back when his will power broke down. Doubtless partly through these failures,
Stef had grown a bit unhappy, at times grouchy.

My first reaction to his Stone
Age diet proposal was dismay. I have three jobs. I lecture, in and out of town,
and enjoy the innumerable extracurricular activities of our New England college
town of Hanover, New Hampshire. Forenoons I write books about the arctic,
"for teen-agers and uninformed adults," to be able to afford the
luxury of being librarian afternoons of the large polar library my husband and
I acquired when we were free-lance writers and government contractors, which
library now belongs to Dartmouth College. I take part in a course called the
Arctic Seminar, and last winter was director. I sing in madrigal groups and act
in experimental theater plays. Only by a miserly budgeting of time do I manage
these things. "In addition," I thought to myself, "I am now
supposed to prepare two menus!"

But aloud I said: "Of
course, dear." And we began to plan.

To my astonished delight,
contrary to all my previous thinking, the Stone Age diet not only proved
effective in getting rid of Stef's overweight, but was also cheaper, simpler,
and easier to prepare than our regular mixed diet had been. Far from requiring
more time, it took less. Instead of adding housekeeping burdens, it relieved
them. Almost imperceptibly Stef's diet became my diet. Time was saved in not
shopping for, not preparing, not cooking, and not washing up after unrequired
dishes, among them vegetables, salads, and desserts.

Some of our friends say:
"We would go on a meat diet too, but we couldn't possibly afford it."
That started me investigating the actual cost of the diet. Unlike salads and
desserts, which often do not keep, meat is as good several days later as the
day it was cooked. There is no waste. I found our food bills were lower than
they had been. But I attribute this to our fondness for mutton. Fortunately for
us it is an unfashionable meat, which means it is cheap. We both like it, and
thanks to our deep freeze, we buy fat old sheep at anything from twenty-two to
thirty-three cents a pound and proceed to live on the fat of the land. We also
buy beef, usually beef marrow. European cooks appreciate marrow, but most
people in our country have never even tasted it, poor things.

When you eat as a primitive
Eskimo does, you live on lean and fat meats. A typical Stefansson dinner is a
rare or medium sirloin steak and coffee. The coffee is freshly ground. If there
is enough fat on the steak we take our coffee black, otherwise heavy cream is
added. Sometimes we have a bottle of wine. We have no bread, no starchy
vegetables, no desserts. Rather often we eat half a grapefruit. We eat eggs for
breakfast, two for Stef, one for me, with lots of butter.

Startling improvements in
health came to Stef after several weeks on the new diet. He began to lose his
overweight almost at once, and lost steadily, eating as much as he pleased and
feeling satisfied the while. He lost seventeen pounds, then his weight remained
stationary, although the amount he ate was the same. From being slightly
irritable and depressed, he became once more his old ebullient, optimistic
self. By eating mutton he became a lamb.

An unlooked-for and remarkable
change was the disappearance of his arthritis, which had troubled him for years
and which he thought of as a natural result of aging. One of his knees was so
stiff he walked up and down stairs a step at a time, and he always sat on the
aisle in a theater so he could extend his stiff leg comfortably.

Several times a night he would
be awakened by pain in his hips and shoulder when he lay too long on one side;
then he had to turn over and lie on the other side. Without noticing the change
at first, Stef was one day startled to find himself walking up and down stairs,
using both legs equally. He stopped in the middle of our stairs; then walked
down again and up again. He could not remember which knee had been stiff!

Conclusion: The
Stone Age all-meat diet is wholesome. It is an eat-all-you-want reducing diet
that permits you to forget you are dieting--no hunger pangs remind you. It
saves time and money. Best of all, it improves the temperament. It somehow
makes one feel optimistic, mildly euphoric.

Epilogue: Stef
used to love his role of being a thorn in the flesh of nutritionists. But in
1957 an article appeared in the august journal of the American Medical
Association confirming what Stef had known for years from his anthropology and
his own experience. The author of this book has also popularized Stef's diet in
England, with the blessing of staid British medical folk.

Was it with the faintest trace
of disappointment in his voice that Stef turned to me, after a strenuous
nutrition discussion, and said: "I have always been right. But now I am
becoming orthodox! I shall have to find myself a new heresy."

About Me

I was diagnosed a Type 2 diabetic in 1986. I started a Very Low Carb diet (Atkins Induction) in 2002 to lose weight. I didn’t realize at the time that it would put my diabetes in clinical remission, or that I would be able to give up almost all of my oral diabetes meds. I also didn’t understand that, as I lost weight and continued to eat Very Low Carb, my blood lipids would dramatically improve (doubling my HDL and cutting my triglycerides by 2/3rds) and that my blood pressure would drop from 130/90 to 110/70 on the same meds.
Over the years I changed from Atkins to the Bernstein Diet (designed for diabetics) and, altogether lost 170 pounds. I later regained some and then lost some. As long as I eat Very Low Carb, I am not hungry and I have lots of energy. And I no longer have any of the indications of Metabolic Syndrome.
My goal, as long as I have excess body fat, is to remain continuously in a ketogenic state, both for blood glucose regulation and continued weight loss. I expect that this regimen will continue to provide the benefits of reduced systemic inflammation, improved blood lipids and lower blood pressure as well.